Is Lithuanian the Oldest Language? - Olga Olina | PGO 2020

Lithuanian is the most conservative language of the surviving representatives of the Indo-European language family. Many Lithuanian words correspond in sound and meaning exactly to their cognates in Vedic Sanskrit, the language of scholarly elite of ancient India. Due to this, Lithuanian erroneously enjoys the fame of being the oldest language in the world. Though this statement is not accurate, Lithuanian has indeed retained a large number of grammatical features of the Proto-Indo-European, the common ancestor of more than 400 languages spoken on every continent of the world, and is hence of great importance to historical linguists. My talk will introduce you to some of the archaic grammatical features of Lithuanian. Additionally, I will cover some of its oldest written records and explain the basics of linguistic reconstruction.

Olga Olina is a huge language nerd and is currently mastering in Indo-European Linguistics at Humboldt University of Berlin. She has been tutoring various ancient languages over the past years - including Sanskrit, Hittite, Old Persian, Hieroglyphic Luwian and many more. Her current research topics include methods of script decipherment, philology of Old Lithuanian and metre patterns in Old Germanic poetry.

This video was recorded at the Polyglot Gathering Online 2020 (https://www.polyglotgathering.com/).